Who’s behind the war on cash?

There is little more destructive to the health, wealth, happiness, well-being and liberty of the populace than when the government makes policy to make its citizens’ lives better, protect them from crime, make their children safe or help them preserve their wealth.

Case in point: Last week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly banned its largest bank notes — 500 and 1,000 rupee notes (500 rupees equals $7.50) — declaring that they would cease to be legal tender at year end and requiring them to be deposited in banks by that time. This has thrown the nation into turmoil.

To grasp how devastating this move is to the Indian people, one must understand how different India’s economy is from most of the rest of the world.

Half of India’s citizens don’t have a bank account and about 25 percent do not even have an identity card. Most of these have little or no education. Ninety-seven percent of India’s economy is cash-based, and Modi’s order made 88 percent of all outstanding currency unusable.

So, without a bank account and familiarity with the banking system, and lacking an education or even the ability to read and write, much of the country has no way of converting their money, and those that can figure it out are limited to exchanging no more than 4,000 rupees ($60) per day. And this only after standing in long lines.

According to Jayant Bhandari, exchanging the money for newly approved notes requires standing in three lines in the proper sequence. One must go to one line to get a form that calls for personal information and the serial number of all the bills to be exchanged. A second line is then called for where the completed form is presented along with a government-approved ID card. There the ID is checked against the information on the form and a photocopy of all the documents is made. From there, citizens are directed to a third line where the bank notes, form and photocopy of the ID are presented to be exchanged for new notes. The process takes hours and must be accomplished – 4,000 rupees at a time — until all old currency is exchanged for new.

Already in India inflation is running rampant, counterfeit currency is flooding the market, phony government officers are bilking the populace, people are unable to buy food and medicine, violence has increased, the price of gold has exploded, consumption in the cities has dropped dramatically, businesses are out of useable money and goods, a barter economy is expanding, and government agents are enriching themselves at the people’s expense. ATMs do not yet accept the new notes.

Modi moved to ban the large notes and institute a new currency under the guise of cracking down on black market transactions, eradicating corruption and fighting counterfeiting. But this just one more step in the globalist elite’s rush to ban cash.

The old saw says to “follow the money,” and when government policy of this sort is implicated it’s a good idea to follow the money and ask, “Que bono (who benefits)?”

In this case, one does not have to look far. Bill Gates, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), has made strong inroads into the Indian government, primarily through his phony altruistic vaccine program and health spending toward HIV prevention, polio eradication, child health and nutrition and other programs (a story for another day). He also just happened to be in India on business within a few days of Modi’s decree and is known to have advised Modi, telling him, “The world will go cashless and India will move quite rapidly to a digital payments economy.”

Why would Gates care about a “digital payments economy?” He wants to work with the Indian government on various issues including “epayments, digital health, digital literacy and e-agriculture.”

In 2012, BMGF partnered with a number of governments, international banks, corporations and organizations to form the “Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA),” whose mission it is to “accelerate the transition from cash to digital payments globally through excellence in advocacy, knowledge and services to members.” Among the member governments is India, and globalist corporations involved include Coca Cola, Visa, MasterCard, the Citi Foundation, the CIA front group U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Savings Bank Institute (representing 7,000 retail and savings banks worldwide), the Ford Foundation, the Clinton Development Initiative and a host of UN agencies and organizations.

All these organizations will profit off the move to cashless commerce in at least one of several ways. Some will directly profit from creating the digital networks in Third World countries like India. Some from the digital transactions themselves. Some from creating e-commerce stores. Some from the increased taxes by the elimination of off-book cash transactions, and by profiting from the electronic tax payments through government contracts. Some from the increased surveillance digital transactions make possible. And the people, as Gates points out, will be able to have better access to banks for borrowing.

Ah, the great American Dream — becoming a debt slave to the bankster class. It will soon be available in India and elsewhere. What’s a little poverty and hardship and death and destruction along the way to making a “better society” based on debt?

Days after India’s move, banking giant UBS proposed that Australia eliminate its $100 and $50 bills, claiming it would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”

Make no mistake; there is a global war on cash as a medium of exchange. It is being waged by governments, banksters and global elites to create a cashless society where all financial transactions take place as transfers of electrons in a digital web.

Here is the pattern of evidence that should convince even the most ardent of skeptics that the war on cash is being prosecuted on all fronts around the world. In just the last few years, central planners have launched this series of multiple attacks on cash:

France has been especially aggressive as French Finance Minister Michel Sapin openly declared it was necessary to “fight against the use of cash and anonymity in the French economy.” Recent French laws that have gone into effect:

Ban cash transactions of more than €1,000 (down from the previous limit of 3,000 euros).

Limit cash payments by foreign tourists to €10,000.

Lower the threshold below which a French resident is free to convert euros into other currencies without having to show an identity card from 8,000 euros to 1,000 euros.

Require any cash deposit or withdrawal of more than 10,000 euros during a single month to be reported to the French anti-fraud and money laundering agency Tracfin.

Require that French authorities be notified of any freight transfers within the EU exceeding €10,000, including checks, pre-paid cards or gold.

Many retailers around the world have stopped accepting cash to avoid being regarded with suspicion when they make large cash deposits at the bank, which in many countries – including the U.S. — have to be reported to the government.

Banksters don’t like cash for a host of reasons: Cash is dirty and cumbersome to handle and count, and it has to be stored in expensive vaults protected by expensive security measures. But the main reason the global powers hate it is that cash is anonymous.

The banks can’t harvest cash for valuable marketing information about your spending habits so they can target their own advertising to you and sell your personal information to other marketers.

Central bankers don’t like cash because it inhibits their ability to manipulate their monetary policy. Several European central banks have recently imposed negative interest rates, which means depositors have to pay the bank to store their money rather than the bank paying interest to the customer. The objective is to force the money out of the banks and into circulation to stimulate sagging economies. But what it has done so far is simply to drive money out of bank deposits and into cash. For the bankers, eliminating cash would remove this escape route.

Governments don’t like cash because cash transactions are untaxable and untraceable.

Are they winning the war on cash? Yep. Consider this: In the United States, most of the money in our financial system is in stocks, derivatives, bonds, mortgages and digital bank deposits. The real physical cash in circulation — that is, stuff you can actually hold in your hands — adds up in total to less than 1 percent of all the money in our financial system.

And this fact may surprise you, and it illustrates just how far the war on cash has encroached into our financial life. Once upon a time, the U.S. printed currency in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000 and even $10,000 notes. No more. Under the pretext of fighting the war on drugs, in 1969 the U.S. government eliminated all large denominations. The largest paper note now printed by the Treasury Department is the $100 bill!

Are you wondering what you can do to fight back in the war on cash. Truthfully, your weapons are limited and likely to have little if any impact to halt the advance of the financial imperialists. They are far bigger and have far bigger guns than you do.

Besides, most of the public is unwittingly on their side, seduced by the handy convenience of plastic and digital money and debt. Wolf Street’s Don Quijones wrote: “The biggest tragedy of all is that the government’s and banks’ strongest ally in their War on Cash is the general public itself. As long as people continue to abandon the use of cash, for the sake of a few minor gains in convenience, the war on cash is already won.”

But you can take personal measures to retain a certain level of privacy in your financial affairs by converting a portion of your wealth into non-digital assets like gold and silver bullion coins (I don’t recommend bars as they have to be assayed, or receive a certificate of authenticity and they are hard to barter with; and I recommend you avoid numismatics, the value of which is determined by their value to collectors), jewelry, precious gems (especially diamonds), art and antiques or other hard assets. Of these, gold and silver bullion requires the least amount of specialized knowledge.

Of course, you’ll have to provide storage and security for these hard-asset valuables. You may want to consider offshore non-bank storage to get your goods as far from U.S. government hands as is legally permissible, both to protect privacy and to protect against seizure or even confiscation.

And as always we recommend you have plenty of food, water and cash on hand in case of a bank holiday or significant event, and guns and ammo on hand to protect yourself, your family and your valuables.